"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)

Tuesday, August 1, 2017

The Castro-Maduro plot to silence Venezuelans and impose totalitarianism on them

The Venezuelan regime and their allies in the Castro regime continue to escalate repression.

Military snipers targeted and killed protesters on Sunday in Venezuela

Thousands of Cuban military advisers and intelligence officials are assisting the Maduro regime to further consolidate power to entrench the dictatorship in Venezuela. The OAS Secretary General described it last month as "being like an occupation army." The Castro regime's personnel have been training the military, security services and pro-regime militias in tactics and strategies to terrorize and repress the citizenry in Venezuela.

On May 18, 2017 The Miami Herald reported on a recording of a Venezuelan general advocating for the use of snipers
against street demonstrators "in the future." Maduro regime snipers
were spotted this past Sunday, August 30th on roof tops shooting
peaceful protesters in the head. At 4:29pm Blanco tweeted: "Adrián
Rodríguez (13) was assassinated in Capacho, Táchira. Army sniper shot
him in the head from the roof of a school." At 8:18pm he tweeted: "Ender
Peña died (18), shot by bullet during protest in Táchira. Transferred
to a polyclinic, he didn't survive the operation." A few minutes later
at 8:36pm Blanco tweeted:
"Conflict escalation is very obvious. Weeks ago military fired tear gas
into the chest, now firing with rifles to the head."

This has been going for years but the final steps to a Cuban style regime began to be reached in October of 2016 when Venezuela became a dictatorship. On October 20, 2016 when the people of Venezuela called for a referendum to vote on removing Nicolas Maduro from office, a mechanism found in the current constitution, the dictatorship suspended it without a legal basis to do it. The Venezuelan
Education-Action Program on Human Rights [Programa Venezolano de Educación-Acción en Derechos Humanos] PROVEA said on October 23, 2016:

"With the
seriousness and responsibility that characterizes us, we share the
following position to public opinion: Following the illegal suspension
of the process of the realization of the recall referendum, ratifying the
absence of independence of the powers in the country, the government of
Nicholas Maduro should be described as a dictatorship.

The Office of the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) on July 29, 2017 condemned arbitrary restrictions on freedom of expression and assembly in Venezuela citing:

On July 27, 2017 the Minister of the Interior, Justice, and Peace, Major
General Néstor Reverol, announced the prohibition throughout the
Venezuelan national territory of "public demonstrations and meetings,
concentrations of persons or any similar act that may disturb the normal
development of the electoral process"

On July 16, 2017 over seven million Venezuelans voted in a non-binding plebiscite rejecting the Constituent Assembly of the Maduro regime. A general strike was successfully carried out and despite regime violence and a prohibition to protest Venezuelans still took to the streets in protest.

Wuilly Moisés Arteaga, a young man playing the national anthem with his violin, was told to shut up and was shot in the face last Saturday. From his hospital bed he said that he would return to protest in the streets, and he did. He was arrested on Thursday, July 29th beaten up and tortured for protesting against the Maduro regime to the degree that he has lost hearing in his right ear.

Despite threats of reprisals from the Maduro regime for those who did
not go out to vote only 12.4% of Venezuelan voters took part in the sham election and 87.6% abstained from taking part in ratifying the dictatorship. The international community has reacted negatively to the carnage in Venezuela and the dictatorship there. The Castro dictatorship that has helped to install it denounced "the initiation of a well-orchestrated international operation,
directed in Washington ... to silence the voice of the Venezuelan
people" while celebrating the fraudulent election. Venezuelan citizens spoke out by the vast majority boycotting the vote this past Sunday and brave souls taking to the streets to protest, despite the presence of snipers that permanently silenced some to terrorize many.

In the early morning hours of August 1, 2017 Maduro's security services grabbed opposition leaders Leopoldo López Mendoza and Antonio Ledezma in a manner reminiscent of Cuba or Russia under Stalin. The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro condemned the repression:

On Sunday there were 16 indiscriminate murders of citizens who protested
against a fraudulent election and the installation of an illegitimate
national constituent assembly.

Today there was the selective targeting of opponents. The regime is
trying to silence Ledezma and López and, through them, silence and
subdue an entire people. It is no accident. They are opposition
political leaders in a framework of the social, political and economic
crisis of a Venezuela that is suffering to return to democracy.

There are no legal rationale for Ledezma and López to be in jail.

The Castro and Maduro regimes are working over time to silence Venezuelans and impose a totalitarian dictatorship in Venezuela.